Both Seagate and Western Digital announced Q2 results last week perhaps signalling a return of confidence in the disk drive channel. Component manufacturers in the enterprise IT channel are an interesting bellwether of market confidence as orders need to be placed in advance of shipments of finished goods. There is a significant delay in revenue recognition from disk drive component to populated storage controller. On this basis we should see some interesting positive results for the desktop, server and storage controller vendors in Q1 2010.
Revenue was up at both Western Digital (44% y/y) and at Seagate (33.4% y/y) as were shipments. Seagate reported 36% growth whilst Western Digital 29% growth.
Pingback by Tweets that mention Confidence returns as component vendors signal uptick in shipments | The Hot Aisle -- Topsy.com on 26 January 2010:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Steve O'Donnell and Martin Williams, ESG. ESG said: RT @stephenodonnell: [Blog] : Strong results from Seagate and Western Digital signal an uptick in confidence http://bit.ly/5C2JmL #datac … [...]